I’ve never found Will’s objections to the hinge of history argument persuasive. Convincing me that there was a greater potential impact in past times than I thought, ie. that it would have been very influential to prevent the rise of Christianity, shouldn’t make me disbelieve that arguments that AI or bio risks are likely to lead to catastrophe in the next few decades if we don’t do anything about it. But maybe I just need to reread the argument again.
I think you probably need to read the argument again (but so do I and apologies if I get anything wrong here). Will has two main arguments against thinking that we are currently at the hinge of history (HoH):
1. It would be an extraordinary coincidence if right now was the HoH. In other words our prior probability of that possibility should be low and so we need pretty extraordinary evidence to believe that we are at HoH (and we don’t have such extraordinary evidence)
2. Hinginess generally has increased over time as we become more knowledgeable, powerful and hold better values. We should probably expect this trend to continue and so it seems most likely that HoH is in the future
I understand that (critical) feedback on his ideas mainly came in challenging point 1 - many in the EA movement don’t think we need to set such a low prior for HoH and think that the evidence that we are at HoH is strong enough.
Thanks, that was useful. I didn’t realise that his argument involved 1+2 and not just 1 by itself. That said, if the hinge of history was some point in the past, then that doesn’t affect our decisions as we can’t invest in the past. And perhaps it’s a less extraordinary coincidence that the forward-looking hinge of history (where we restrict the time period from now until the end of humanity) could be now, especially if in the average case we don’t expect history to go on much longer.
You might also like to listen to the podcast episode and have a look at the comments in the original post which cover quite a few objections to Will’s argument.
For what it’s worth I don’t think Will ever suggests the hinge was in the past (I might be wrong though). His idea that hinginess generally increases over time probably implies that he doesn’t think the hinge was in the past. He does mention that thinking about the past is useful though to get a sense of the overall distribution of hinginess over time which then allows us to compare the present to the future.
Also I just want to add that Will isn’t implying we shouldn’t do anything about x-risks, just that we may want to diversify by putting more resources into “buck-passing” strategies that allow more influential decision-makers in the future to be as effective as possible
I’ve never found Will’s objections to the hinge of history argument persuasive. Convincing me that there was a greater potential impact in past times than I thought, ie. that it would have been very influential to prevent the rise of Christianity, shouldn’t make me disbelieve that arguments that AI or bio risks are likely to lead to catastrophe in the next few decades if we don’t do anything about it. But maybe I just need to reread the argument again.
I think you probably need to read the argument again (but so do I and apologies if I get anything wrong here). Will has two main arguments against thinking that we are currently at the hinge of history (HoH):
1. It would be an extraordinary coincidence if right now was the HoH. In other words our prior probability of that possibility should be low and so we need pretty extraordinary evidence to believe that we are at HoH (and we don’t have such extraordinary evidence)
2. Hinginess generally has increased over time as we become more knowledgeable, powerful and hold better values. We should probably expect this trend to continue and so it seems most likely that HoH is in the future
I understand that (critical) feedback on his ideas mainly came in challenging point 1 - many in the EA movement don’t think we need to set such a low prior for HoH and think that the evidence that we are at HoH is strong enough.
Thanks, that was useful. I didn’t realise that his argument involved 1+2 and not just 1 by itself. That said, if the hinge of history was some point in the past, then that doesn’t affect our decisions as we can’t invest in the past. And perhaps it’s a less extraordinary coincidence that the forward-looking hinge of history (where we restrict the time period from now until the end of humanity) could be now, especially if in the average case we don’t expect history to go on much longer.
You might also like to listen to the podcast episode and have a look at the comments in the original post which cover quite a few objections to Will’s argument.
For what it’s worth I don’t think Will ever suggests the hinge was in the past (I might be wrong though). His idea that hinginess generally increases over time probably implies that he doesn’t think the hinge was in the past. He does mention that thinking about the past is useful though to get a sense of the overall distribution of hinginess over time which then allows us to compare the present to the future.
Also I just want to add that Will isn’t implying we shouldn’t do anything about x-risks, just that we may want to diversify by putting more resources into “buck-passing” strategies that allow more influential decision-makers in the future to be as effective as possible